Digimon Genesis
by Psi-liloquy
Summary: A more mature look at the Digital World through the eyes of a man who finds himself face-to-face with a destiny he never expected.
1. 1 Awakening

[A/N: _I was a huge Digimon fan as a teenager (Seasons 1 and 2, mostly), and years later, my interest has been greatly rejuvenated, enough to where I have written a story featuring a brand-new set of Digidestined. This is more of a mature look at the series, so I hope you enjoy it! Comments are appreciated, hardly demanded_.]

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**_DIGIMON GENESIS_**

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**Chapter One: Awakening**

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_If I don't get some shelter_

_Oh yeah, I'm gonna fade away . . ._

-The Rolling Stones

_Light._

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying my best to ignore the throbbing pain in my head. It felt like someone had set off a dynamite charge in my skull. I hadn't ever experienced a hangover (something college kids can rarely say), but now I understood. The light was like spikes stabbing into the back of my skull, and I groaned.

I lay there in that darkness, not wanting to move, afraid that if I did the rest of my body would explode with pain. I moved my fingers, flexed them-and they dug into something soft. Dirt. This puzzled me, and I realized I was not in bed, or even inside.

Something else-the sounds. It sounded like the twitter of birds, the rustling of leaves in the wind.

I was outside.

I groaned again, and slowly I lifted my head. I kept my eyes closed as long as I could, not wanting to let the light in . . .

"Are you all right?"

A voice. I rubbed the back of my head, feeling dirt crumble and fall from where it was caked there, and I nodded. "Yeah, I think I'm okay. Thanks."

"Don't mention it."

The voice sounded unfamiliar. Slowly I cracked my eyes open . . . and my body seized up in polarizing fear.

There was a monster in front of me.

It was the size of a deflated soccer ball. It had large liquid-black eyes and a mouth that was turned up in a happy grin. It floated a foot or so off the ground, eye level with me. Its round body bristled with a half-dozen pointed spokes. But what really seized my attention in the moment before my body broke its paralysis was the flame. It shot out of the top of the thing's head like a geyser.

Then my terror kicked in.

"Whoa-ho-holy crap!" I leapt bolt upright, eyes bugging out of their sockets. The creature drifted backwards in surprise, and I looked around for a weapon, something to use in case the thing jumped me.

"Relax!"

It took me a moment to realize that the voice came from the fiery creature itself. It caught me so off-guard that I forgot my weapon hunt.

"D-did you just talk?" I couldn't believe it-but then, I wouldn't have believed that something like this thing could even exist, much less speak.

"Don't act so shocked," the creature said loftily-it had a burr in its voice, like cut glass.

I tried to speak, but all that came out was a strangled half-yell.

"Please, just calm down." The creature inched closer, and I scrambled back automatically with fear. I won't lie; I was a stone's throw away from pissing myself, yammering my head off. And this thing was telling me to calm down?

"I'm Sunmon," the creature said, beaming wildly-no pun intended.

"Sunmon." I repeated the name, and for some reason kept picturing a guy with dreadlocks playing guitar on a street corner. But this creature had no hair to speak off.

"Yup. That's me." The creature bounced about. "And you're Steve, right?"

"Er . . . yeah." For a second there, I had forgotten my own name. My stark terror had subsided to a dull tension, but my nerves were twanging and I felt that if I didn't do something, I would go crazy. "What the hell are you?"

"What do you mean, what am I?" Now this Sunmon thing was looking honestly confused. "I'm Sunmon."

"What are you talking about?"

Now Sunmon was looking at me like a child. "Erm . . . I'm a Digimon."

"A Digimon?" The word held some familiarity to me, like something spoken out of a dream or a childhood memory.

"Aren't you . . . hot?"

"Huh? It's autumn."

"I know, but . . ." I waved my hands at the flame on top of his head. Sunmon's eyes followed my gestures.

"Oh, no - I'm quite all right. It doesn't hurt me - watch!"

He closed his eyes, and suddenly the flame suddenly exploded to a huge blaze. I jerked back, crying out, shielding my eyes - the flame had consumed Sunmon. I looked around again, not for a weapon this time but for something to put out the flames. The poor little guy was toast, I know, but maybe-

Then the burning brightness left, and I looked back, expecting to see the charred remains of the bizarre creature-but it was just sitting there, grinning toothily.

"How'd you do that?"

"Told ya it doesn't hurt," he said proudly. "But it sure makes me hungry. Do you have any food?"

Food? I didn't know. I didn't even know how I'd gotten here. My hands patted my pockets, in case I had a half-eaten bag of M&Ms or something . . . and then my fingers closed on something cold and heavy in my right pocket.

"What . . ."

I reached in and pulled it out. It was a palm-sized device, round and silver in color. It had three buttons circling the tiny screen, which was black and silent. There was a ring of strange markings around the screen, like ancient hieroglyphs. I'd taken Greek and Latin the previous year, and this looked nothing like anything I'd seen before. The device itself didn't have an Apple or a Microsoft logo on it, either. I had never seen it before-at least, I didn't think I did. But it had some kind of cool comfort, resting in the palm of my hand. And I'll tell you something else: I felt a potential for some serious heat within that cold metal.

_This doesn't look Mac-compatible_, I thought crazily, and I held it up. "Do you know what this is?"

Sunmon squinted at it for a long moment. Then he frowned. "Search me. Is it food?"

"Not unless you eat metal." I pressed one of the buttons, expecting the screen to light up or something-but nothing happened. I pressed another. Still nothing. Ditto with the third.

"Nope."

I shrugged, then tucked the

_(digivice)_

strange object back in my pocket. I continued rummaging, and found a pack of wintergreen gum in my pocket. I unwrapped a stick and held it out gingerly, expecting to get my fingers singed. But Sunmon hovered right up to me, and I felt the heat baking off of him-but it wasn't searing, like I expected. It was, to be honest, almost comforting, like an electric blanket. He took the gum between his teeth and chewed.

While he did, I glanced about the place. I was standing in a clearing in the middle of a forest. The trees were huge, solid trunks over a hundred feet tall. Redwoods, I thought-but the trees bristled with leaves of many colors, including colors I'd never seen on any plant before. The sun dappled them, causing them to ripple and shimmer. It was beautiful, but also alien and it did not sit right with me.

"Where the hell am I?"

Sunmon swallowed. "What do you mean, where are you? You're on the outskirts of Mod City."

"Mod . . . City?" I had never heard of it. I didn't live to any major metropolitan city, especially ones that bordered a thick forest inhabited by strange fiery creatures that could talk. Still, it was a city, and city meant civilization, and civilization meant-

"Are there people there?"

"People?" Now Sunmon looked even more confused.

I realized it was a stupid question-of course people were there. It was a city, after all. "Never mind. Can you take me there?"

Sunmon hesitated. "Uh . . . why would you want to go there?"

"Can you take me or not?"

Sunmon arched an eyebrow. "For another piece of that food, I will."


	2. The City Limits

_**DIGIMON GENESIS**_

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**Chapter Two: The City Limits**

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_We shut 'em up and then we shut 'em down._

-Bruce Springsteen

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"What in God's name _happened_ here?"

We stood on the borders of a city-only there _was _no city, really. The lush forest had given way to a charred, ash-choked plain, where the ruins of buildings grew like jagged colorless crags. Mountains of debris created a harsh-looking labyrinth. And the smell. It smelled acrid, burned, but not like a fire. It sounds weird, I know. It smelled _ionized, _like the air after the lightning storm.

The place seemed devoid of life. It was dead.

"It's always been this way," Sunmon said mournfully. "As long as I can remember, anyway."

"What did this, though? Some kind of nuclear explosion?" I suddenly felt a chill run down my spine. Was there residual radiation lingering around here from some kind of blast? Was my hair going to fall out? Was I going to end up puking all my internal organs?

Sunmon had no answer. That didn't make me feel any better.

I squinted as I moved through the ash. My hopes of finding intelligent life (or, at least, human life) were rapidly dwindling. Someone had taken off and nuked the site from orbit, by the looks of it. Terrorists? Or was it a case of _Oops, wrong button_?

A nuclear blast, though . . . it did explain some things. Like Sunmon, for instance. Was he a mutated creature created by atomic exposure? It was a possibility, but I doubted it. Maybe over thousands of years could something like Sunmon crop up from the primordial ooze after it's been microwaved and flambéed, but I was only out for an hour.

Wasn't I?

The remains of this city unnerved me, and not just because of its condition. Its structure was different, too. There were no remnants of skyscrapers, or of great highways that you would see in many metropolitan areas. It had a very agrarian look, like I imagined Bombay would look a hundred years ago. And there were no wrecked cars anywhere. The streets were choked with rubble and debris, but I didn't see any charred husks of Fords or Chevys or even a Honda. The masonry of the buildings was all wrong, too. And-

_WHACK!_

An explosion of pain, hot and red, bloomed in my face. I fell to my knees, stars winking and crackling like fireworks in my eyes. I was dimly aware of Sunmon yelling, and then I saw it.

It was about two feet tall, and it was covered with a huge shock of white hair. Its feet were bare, and white hair bristled from all over them. It was wearing a ragged and dirty-looking thing that resembled a pillowcase, and in one fist it clenched a long staff. The head of the staff was carved in the shape of a giant fist, and blood dripped from one knuckle.

_My _blood.

"Who are you?" the thing demanded, in a throaty voice I normally associated with elderly men hawking phlegm. "Answer, or I'll bash your brains in!"

I scrabbled back on my butt, my fingers hooking into the thick carpet of ash that layered the street. The dwarf thing advanced, raising the staff slowly like Jack Nicholson in _The Shining. _My eyes were tearing up from the pain, but I could still see through the watery haze that the little gnome was about to break my skull open like a watermelon.

Sunmon hovered over my shoulder. "Steve, maybe you ought to give him some of that gum," he suggested.

I thought that sounded ludicrous-this _thing_ didn't even seem to have a mouth through all that wispy hair, but my hand numbly dipped into my pocket as I inched backwards, and I pulled out the gum with trembling hands. As I did, I knocked the gadget I'd stuffed in there earlier and it spilled onto the street, clattering in the ash.

The gnome stopped dead in its tracks.

It was staring-at least I think it was-at the gizmo I'd dropped. His head cocked to one side, and he lowered the staff. I opened my mouth to speak but my mouth filled with a sudden coppery taste-blood was trickling in runnels. I clapped a hand over my nose to staunch the flow. It didn't feel broken, but it didn't feel good, either.

The gnome gingerly poked the staff at the gadget, almost as though it were a wild beast that would snap at him. Then it made a low whispery sigh, and it seemed to look at me.

"You," it rasped, "are a Chosen One!"

_What the hell? _I looked at Sunmon, but the little guy seemed as baffled as I was. Good; I wasn't the only one lost in the woods. I-

I felt a sharp pain in my ribs. The gnome was poking me in the chest with the staff now. I swatted it away. "Hey, watch it!"

"Get up, get up," the gnome hissed at me. "Don't just sit there, fool! Follow me! Quickly!"

He turned and started running toward one of the nearby alleys filled with crumbling debris. He moved swiftly, almost too fast to see, and in the ashen haze of the city he was almost invisible.

"What do you think, Sunmon?" I asked the floating creature beside me.

Sunmon hesitated. "I don't know . . . he seems harmless enough."

I felt a sudden urge to laugh. "Harmless? He nearly broke my nose." I held up a blood-creased palm to illustrate my point.

"Still . . . he seems to be the only person here."

He had a point, I had to admit. I slowly pushed myself to my feet, wincing with pain. First a headache, now a bashed nose. What next?

"Well, okay," I said finally. "But I'm gonna keep my distance from that thing's staff-"

"Would you hurry up?" the little gnome hissed urgently, jabbing at me with the aforementioned staff for punctuation.

"Jeez-all right, already," I muttered, and I started walking after him.

"Steve?"

It was Sunmon. I looked back. "Huh?"

"Don't forget the what-you-call-it." He was looking at the gadget I'd dropped in the ash. In all the face-battering excitement, I had forgotten it.

I bent down and scooped it up. I was about to drop it into my pocket when I noticed something. The screen was no longer dark. A single white bar blinked at the bottom, like it was indicating a low battery or something. Then, as I looked at it, it winked out and the screen went black again.

_Funny_, I thought, tucking the gizmo into my pocket. It was just another mystery in a world full of them.

"Come on, Sunmon," I said to my compatriot, and we followed the hairy little dwarf into the cluttered alleyway.


End file.
